Late last evening, I heard about something really cool at my church Board meeting that I wanted to share.

Our pastor reported that he’d met with a 14 year-old volunteer from our Breathe Respite events who came to him with a fleshed-out proposal for the church to host a luau this summer as an outreach to 50 adults with developmental disabilities living in our community.

The volunteer came to the meeting with a Power Point presentation, detailed timelines of tasks needing to be completed, a leadership team in place and a plan to raise money for the event through solicitation of local merchants and businesses.

Our pastor reported to our Board that the volunteer pointed out that our church is very active in serving families of kids with disabilities, we were overlooking a group of adults in our community who also needed to experience an expression of the love of Christ.

Stuff to ponder:

While our focus at Key Ministry is to help churches serve, welcome and include families of kids with hidden disabilities with the intent that the kids and their families will greatly benefit from being in a church where they can come to know and love Jesus, there’s a huge potential for spiritual growth among kids given the opportunity to serve in such a ministry.

Next, what would you anticipate the impact will be among the adults in our church who we’re encouraging to engage in missional outreach when they see that a 14 year-old kid volunteering in our respite outreach was able to assemble a team to engage in a significant ministry initiative?

Finally, I’d like to put in a plug for Summer of Service, a week-long outreach for students by our friends at Cincinnati Vineyard in which kids are given the opportunity to engage in tangible acts of service impacting the greater Cincinnati community. Last year, approximately 1,000 kids from 40 churches in 20 states participated in SOS, including the volunteer from our church leading the plans for our luau. Since kids from our church were involved in staging a similar luau last summer on a much larger scale for 900 adults with developmental disabilities from group homes throughout the greater Cincinnati area, our church board expressed confidence in the team’s ability to execute a smaller-scale event with excellence.